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Bainan Stormbeard
|Row 2 title = Character |Row 2 info = Paladin Level 60 |Row 3 title = Nationality |Row 3 info = Stormpike Clan (Birth) Ironforge (Adopted) |Row 4 title = Born |Row 4 info = 5 July, -52 L.C.; (Age 89) Alterac |Row 5 title = Positions |Row 5 info = Footman (4 - 8 L.C.) Alliance Paladin (8 - 23 L.C.) Surveyor (23 - 26 L.C.) Stormpike Thane (28 - 29 L.C.) |Row 6 title = Allegiances |Row 6 info = (1st War) (2nd and 3rd Wars) Explorers' League (Expelled) Miners' Union (Expelled) Stormpike Guard (Dark Times) }} |Row 7 title = Occupations |Row 7 info = Intellectual Financier Gambler |Row 8 title = Beliefs |Row 8 info = Church of the Holy Light Internationalism Economic Liberalism Alliance Federalism Industrialism |Row 9 title = Awards |Row 9 info = |Row 10 title = |Row 10 info = |image = Bainan Stormbeard.png|caption = Stormbeard in 37 L.C. ----|imagewidth = 300}} Bainan Gareth Ranford Stormbeard (Born 5 July, -52 L.C.) is a Dwarven dissident, capitalist, liberal intellectual, and former Paladin of the Silver Hand. He is one of Ironforge's most prolific pamphleteers. In his works, he argues passionately for economic and political integration with other members of the Alliance, for economically liberal reforms, and for policies friendly to the development of industrial capitalism. His most original contributions are to finance theory, fielding experimental ideas which he is burning to prove would work in practice. He also has a reputation as an avid gambler and a shrewd financier. Though Bainan was born a member of the insular Stormpike Clan of the Alterac Mountains, he left his home early in life to join a growing class of rootless internationalists capable of living and working anywhere in the Eastern Kingdoms, but never of really belonging. His impulsive decision to join the Stormwind Army during the First War would lead to a military career spanning twenty-five years. He earned a number of decorations throughout the three great wars, but was underwhelming as a soldier. The Fall of Lordaeron at the height of the Third War prompted Bainan to flee into retirement. He sought refuge along with a group of Lordaeranian survivors in Ironforge, which he made his permanent home. In 25 L.C., Bainan began writing in a friend's publication about his frustrations with the turn that the Kingdom of Ironforge had taken under King Magni Bronzebeard, reorienting its focus from industry and finance to archeology, from inventing the future to obsessing over the past. Bainan's outspoken criticism all but ended his professional life – he was expelled from both the Miners' Union and Explorers' League – though his writing also inaugurated a new career as a dissident author and theorist. Bainan is widely denounced among the high society and mystics of Ironforge, though he has an enthusiastic following among the financiers, industrialists, professionals, and business magnates of the city. This turned out to be his ticket into the world of high finance. Primarily through high-stakes gambling, Bainan made powerful friends and began to dabble in finance himself – making enough to pay off the debts he would amass while playing. Biography Early life Bainan was born on July 5 in the year -52 L.C. to Bunmin and Rediria Stormbeard, Stormpike Dwarves living in the Alterac Mountains. His parents were goldsmiths and members of a deeply conservative and powerful family of Dwarven craftsmen, the heads of the Stormpike Goldsmiths' Guild for thirteen generations. Bainan, along with his brother Gramdor and sister Tyshlin, were prepared from an early age to take on the family mantle. Bainan's brother, ten years his elder, was his father's favorite occupied the spotlight. Gramdor was the heir apparent, the scion of the Stormbeards, being groomed to become the patriarch of the family. Tyshlin and Bainan, as the youngest, were to act as their brother's most loyal retainers, closest advisors, and most dependable assistants. Such had been the way of the Stormbeards. Throughout his early life, Bainan resisted the mold he was so carefully being poured into. As the youngest, he was his mother's favorite and was treated with the greatest leniency. He was indolent and showed very little interest in the crafts, traditions, or politics of his family. Instead, his fascinations lay with miners and traders, explorers and engineers, the vanguard of Dwarven society at the time. He spent a lot of time gallivanting through town with the sons and daughters of those whom his family considered social inferiors, causing more than one scandal. Starting in -13 L.C., the Stormbeards began giving him permission to represent the family on expeditions which took him far from home. At 39 –– barely an adult by Dwarven standards – Bainan joined an emerging globe-trotting class of Dwarven prosperctors, engineers, heroes, mercenaries, explorers, and laborers. He worked odd jobs, whatever would fund him through the week, and returned to Alterac only when he could not sustain himself. His travels would take him to the four corners of the Eastern Kingdoms, sometimes representing his family, sometimes accompanying this or that prominent Dwarf as they pushed the extent of Dwarven knowledge and power, sometimes just representing himself. First War As a young naive with few skills on offer and little to his name, Bainan answered the call of the embattled Stormwind Army at the start of the First War. He enlisted as a ranking soldier in 4 L.C. and would fight in the infantry for the duration of the war, first as a footman, then as a captain. This gave his family the pretext they were looking to finally disinherit him and expel him from the Goldsmiths' Guild. It was here that Bainan's daring, idealistic, insubordinate, and overconfident nature encountered a brutal series of reality checks. Bainan earned the in 5 L.C. after a wound to the head outside Grand Hamlet nearly ended his life. He was treated in Stormwind for nine months and rejoined his regiment in 6 L.C.. By 7 L.C., Bainan was one of a small core of soldiers in the Stormwind Army who had survived since the beginning of the war. Though many of his human counterparts had already been promoted out of the ranks, Bainan's superiors had hesitated to promote him past a non-commissioned rank. Previously, it had been due to his youth, inexperience, and unwillingness to trust anyone's judgement over his own. Then, later in the war, it had been his overriding caution, borne of two long years in the field. Bainan seemed to care more about making sure that he and his men would survive the war than actually defeating the Horde. This seriously impaired his effectiveness as a battlefield commander, but he was loved by all who served under him. There was also the fact that Bainan's superiors thought that a Dwarf leading men would be bad for morale. In 8 L.C., with the Stormwind Army's pool of experienced leaders running perilously low, they finally granted him the commissioned rank of Captain in a wave of expedited battlefield promotions. In the final months of the war, Bainan's regiment was greatly diminished in the Fall of Stormwind before linking up with forces under the command of Anduin Lothar and participating in the retreat to Lordaeron. Second War Bainan's battered regiment was reconstituted at the beginning of the Second War as part of the Stormwind Army in Exile, with Bainan earning a Knighthood and taking on the rank of Lieutenant Colonel as a reward for aligning with a powerful patron. This was a move which initially paid off, though Bainan's chosen faction would lose the struggle for power over the military within six months. The resulting purge saw a significant number of high and medium-ranking officers transferred to the Knights of the Silver Hand, Bainan among them. Inter-War Period Third War Mining career Stormpike-Frostwolf Conflict :See: Alterac Valley Family The Stormbeard family, an offshoot of the Stormpike Clan, is an ancient and respected line of goldsmiths and craftsmen. They have been the patrilineal Grand Masters of the Stormpike Goldsmiths' Guild for thirteen generations. Admired for their metalworking skill, the Stormbeard have carefully passed their expert knowledge from father to eldest son, sometimes adopting or marrying upstart metalworkers into the family when such a male heir was lacking. Steeped in the ancient traditions of their family, the Stormbeards are deeply distrustful and resistant of change. They have always been among the most conservative and fundamentalist families in Stormpike politics. Very few of them have ever left Alterac. The current head of the Stormbeard family is Gramdor Stormbeard, who ascended to the rank of Grand Master of the Goldsmiths' Guild upon the death of his father in 23 L.C.. The heir apparent is Gulmar Stormbeard, a rising craftsman who married into the family and took on its name. Though he was originally second in line to succeed to his father, Bainan Stormbeard was formally disinherited in 4 L.C. when he ran off to join the Stormwind Army. ;Immediate family * Bunmin Stormbeard ✞ (Father) ⚭ Rediria Ironmane (Mother) ** Gramdor Stormbeard (Brother) ⚭ Nora Ironmane (Sister-in-Law) *** Lyssalyn Stormbeard (Niece) *** Mystarlinn Stormbeard (Niece) ** Tyshlin Stormbeard (Sister) ⚭ Gulmar Cliffmane Stormbeard (Brother-in-Law) ** Bainan Stormbeard (Self) Category:Characters Category:Dwarf Category:Soldiers Category:Paladins Category:Stormpike Clan Category:Church of the Holy Light Category:Kingdom of Ironforge Category:Stormwind Army Category:Order of the Silver Hand Category:Explorer's League